A Babel Fish and The Infinate Improbability Drive
by Hikari no Mononoke
Summary: Arthur's babel fish happens to eat the thoughts of the Vogons trying to destroy Earth..again. He then divises a plan to escape from Earth. With his fish bowl, of course.


Notice: I do not own any rights to Douglas Adam's The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Universe series, nor to any of the characters/names contained within it.

Swim, swim, and swim. Swim in a loop, swim in an oblong, swim in a zigzag. Swim in a circle parallel to the ground. Swim in a circle which (if one cared to do the proper measurements) actually just so happened to form a 1 degree incline from the parallel circle he had just swum. Swim in a circle, which forms a 2-degree incline. And so on. This one was his favorites really. Although he liked to do new things he, like all other Babel fish, had to do them with mathematical precision. It was simply part of the gig. And one of his favorite areas of math just so happened to be trigonometry. But it is very difficult for a fish to swim in an absolutely mathematically precise shape that has angles. Hence the circles. But when he swam in circles he thought about the triangles which could be formed by, and within, those circles. This gave him great comfort.

One day, as he was swimming in his fishbowl, he happened to eat the brainwaves of a Vogon on the way to destroy the planet where he, the babel fish, was rather peacefully swimming in perfect circles in his fish bowl. Now, although some people seem to think for some reason that Babel fish do not actually pay any attention to the content of the brainwaves that they eat, this is complete fiction. Indeed, those Babel fish that work as translators are required to transliterate all of the brainwaves they eat before excreting them. This allows for optimal understanding of just exactly what is being said. Therefore this Babel fish became a bit concerned upon eating these particular brain waves, and quickly made up its mind where it was going to excrete them to.

In the Galaxy Alen Fisha a dolphin swimming peacefully in the crystal blue waters of Mizu was startled to hear a Vogon voice speaking to him. It said, "I'm glad I'm finally going to be able to destroy those darn fishbowls the dolphins left on Earth." Very upset about this, the dolphin got together with all its dolphin friends, got on the nearest spaceship (conveniently parked in the middle of the ocean), and flew to the rescue of all the poor fishbowls on Earth. The ship parked in the middle of the ocean was actually the Heart of Gold, with the Infinate Improbabily Drive somehow still within it. The Infinate Improbability Drive had been very upset at having become a marginalized, if not completely forgotten, part of the Hitchhicker's series plot. She had therefore decided to land in the least likely place in the Universe for her to land. She decided this would likely be a large water planet with neither a spaceport, nor any creature that could logically fly a spaceship. She had determined to stay there until someone in the universe finally realized how wrong they were for forgetting her potential as a vital part of the plot of the Hitchhiker's series, and appologized. She was therefore very upset when instead a group of angry dolphins, who completely ignored logic and physics, proceeded to fly her to Earth. She had never liked it when other things ignored logic because she felt it marginalized her famed logic ignoring abilities.

Now it is a fact that what the Babel Fish had just done was in complete contradiction with the laws of the Babel Fish Confederation. But seeing as this particular Babel Fish, whose name just so happened to be Simon, had spent most of his life inside the ear of a very strange Earthling named Arthur Dent, he knew very little of the laws of the Babel Fish Confederation. In fact, the only thing he did know about the laws of the Babel Fish Confederation was that they were written by some researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy named Ford Perfect who, instead of actually researching the Babel Fish, was very busy trying to decide just where he could find the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Therefore, the entire set of laws is complete rubbish. But, ironically, upon eating the thought of someone who had just read the entry, the Babel Fish community decided that they had somehow or another managed to completely forget about the Babel Fish Confederation, and all of its laws. So, using the always-accurate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as its guide, the Babel Fish community formed the Babel Fish Confederation with lots and lots of ridiculous laws.

And so the Babel Fish continued to swim in perfect geometrical shapes within its bowl. Swim, swim, and swim. There really wasn't much else to do for the 26.827 hours it would take for the dolphins to come to his rescue. That night Arthur watched Evangelion again. Meaning, naturally, that Simon had to stop swimming for a bit. While he found it on the whole a rather strange program, he found the parts including the penguin Pen Pen rather terrifying. This lead him to interpret the penguin's rather poetic speeches about the pleasantries of different ways to eat the rare delicacy of Babel Fish into inarticulate animalistic sounds. He most certainly didn't want Arthur to get any ideas and decide to eat him in the next 21.745 hours.

At approximately 64:789:24335 LM on Setviem 32, 33498 (Babel Fish time, of course) the dolphins managed to swim into Arthur's house and save the poor fish bowl (and Simon). They did this by using special dolphin designed pro-physics suits. These pro-physics suits did one thing: make physics so flustered, proud of, and insured of the pure intentions of the pro-physics suits to uphold the laws of physics that it failed to notice that it completely ignored them. It also allowed them to ignore many other issues, such as the lack of water and hands in which to hold the fish bowls they had come to rescue because physics very passionately attacked any and all logic which chose to disagree with the actions of its beloved pro-physics suits.

So, rather simply, upon entering Arthur Dent's house, Simon's fish bowl (with Simon in it) simply floated over to the dolphins, and followed them back to their space ship. Physics likes simplicity. It was very proud of its pro-physics suits.

Once back in the space ship the dolphins discussed eating Simon. Rather opposed to this idea, he worked his hardest to create the most incredibly perfect and complex geometrical shapes within his small fish bowl. In doing so all the dolphins became entranced with him. Not one of them could stop starring at the Babel fish in wonder and amazement. They all came conclusively to the decision not to eat the Babel fish. Any fish that swam like that would have to be rather bony, and would feel very strange while being swallowed. Actually, it made them all feel rather sick to their stomachs. They therefore decided it would be best to dump the fish out into space. They had only come for the fish bowl in the first place.

At the time they picked to throw out Simon they were almost exactly at the center of the universe. (No thanks to the Infinite Improbability Drive.) And Simon, upon being thrown out of the space ship, fell directly into the atmosphere of the Babel Fish's home planet, Lost Logic. (Much thanks to the Infinite Improbability Drive, which had decided to join Simon. All the babbling of physics about how privileged the Infinite Improbability Drivewas to serve those using the pro-physics suits had gotten to her.)

Everything was going just as Simon had planned. Next all it had to do was get the Babel Fish to take over the universe. No worries.


End file.
